Dance Party!!!

So my I Pad doesn't take great action photos but this pretty much sums up a lot of our week.  Tootsie was a dancing fool!  We danced to videos, the I Pod and our own singing.  She danced in her jammies, in her undies but mostly in her fancy shoes.  Tootsie dug these fancy shoes out of my closet for me to dance in!  It was a great way to get some exercise and expend some of that extra energy we sometimes have around here on winter days.  I had fun playing some of my favorite songs for Tootsie and watching her reaction to the variety of music on my I Pod.   We discovered she likes Sam Cooke a lot!  It was a very fun week for both of us and we even managed some Tot School!  We did several activities inspired by one of my favorite books, The Snowy Day.  Here are are trays for the week.

We read The Snowy Day and sequenced the story with cards I laminated several times.

Tootsie painted a winter tree with glue
and sprinkled glitter to make it sparkle.

A quick project but she loves glitter!

Tootsie practiced cutting and sorting snowflakes.  This was a good cutting project as most of her previous practice has been on smaller strips.  She had to make a few cuts on the same line to get through the paper.

Tracing and pre-writing practice with Crayola Dry Erase Markers.  The printables came from Homeschool Creations.  Carissa at 1+1+1=1 uses page protectors with a few of her projects and I have found that they tend to wipe off easier than laminated pages.

It was a beautiful day so we headed outside to make snow angels and tracks in the snow.  Before heading in we packed a snow ball and brought it inside to watch through the afternoon.

I was trying to keep her from tasting the snow by giving her a popsicle.  Notice it didn't work?

Our (predictable) results.  Tootsie was amazed and enjoyed watching the snow ball slowly melt.  I hoped to convince her not to eat snow by showing her what was in the snow ball.  Don't think that worked either :)

Tootsie placed the marbles on the bath tub suction mat using first her fingers and then strawberry pickers.  The pickers were definitely more challenging.  Then I remembered a toy I had picked up at the Dollar Tree a few weeks ago and grabbed that.

She placed all the pegs in the holes and then added the marbles.  She even devised a way to get the marbles when they fell in between the pegs - using an extra peg to poke them out!  We decided that it would be much more fun if it was orange so Tootsie added LOTS of paint to the triangle!  She did this activity several times throughout the week.

I hid the letters from one of her alphabet puzzles in colored pasta.  She quickly found them, finished the puzzle and then ran to her kitchen to grab dishes to play in the noodles.  This sensory tub is still out and being played with.

I recently made Cloud Dough with my preschoolers and Tootsie really wanted to play with it in my classroom so I figured we could make it at home.  She enjoyed the making more than actually playing with it.  I wondered how it would go over as she really doesn't like to get her hands messy.  It's actually really cool, made with only flour, oil and glitter.  It molds like damp sand.  The recipe came from The Imagination Tree.  Check out her blog.  There are a ton of really cool sensory ideas.

We are still playing hide and seek with the letters of her name!  Here she is finding one I stuck to the refrigerator.

We ended the week making brownies in honor of the cupcake app I mentioned last week!  Yes, she is also tasting this!  Notice the (ugly) nightgown.  It is currently her favorite thing to wear, which she does often.  This day she had it on with bright pink leggings and her fancy shoes.  Got to love that little girl style :)

Hope you have a great week!  Can't wait to show you the activities we are currently working on!

Kate